Hunter said, gently and mildly, no longer half-crouched like a man readying himself to rape, but standing some distance from the witness stand, almost careless in his quiet--"You never wanted her to die, Callista?" "No, I--yes, when--nobody ever answered Pilate." "Yes some of the time, no some of the time--that would be natural, perfectly human, wouldn't it, Callista?" "I suppose...." "Does it mean, Callista, that you've remembered what happened in that lapse of memory--the thing you couldn't tell Mr. Lamson?" "Yes." Warner understood he had risen. But there were no words. She must know that he would come to her if he could; but she would not look at him now--only at Hunter, and without hostility, but with somber recognition, as if suddenly after much bewilderment she understood why he was there and what purposes he might serve. "What happened, Callista?" "I heard her take the bottle from the shelf, and the sound of a glass. I heard her come to my door, and knock, and say that she'd poured a drink for me. I lay still. I deceived myself a little, I think--I tried to imagine it was not the poison, then I tried to tell myself she would not drink it. But for a few seconds or minutes the strongest part of me was the part that held me there, willing that she should drink it. When she was gone, and I knew what had happened, that self, that part of me, was no longer in command. Then I became--whatever else I am, and have been since then. Now I'll answer no more questions, even from those I love." II The courtroom had gone into a silence where voices were remembered with uncertainty, like the dead. The judge's chair was empty. Three reporters talked in small murmurs at the press table, waiting it out, and a few spectators remained. Edith watched Mr. Delehanty appear from the small side door at her left, take up with quiet importance a manila folder from his idle desk, mutter inaudibly to one of the bailiffs, glance first at an old-fashioned gold watch from his pocket and then toward the door on the right through which the jury had disappeared three hours ago; then he tiptoed in dignity away. It was nine o'clock in the evening of Friday, December 11th. Closing speeches, the judge's summing up and charge to the jury--done, and anticlimactic all of them, for it seemed to Edith that it was Callista herself who had closed the trial, yesterday. "_I'll answer no more questions_--" standing up then, even before she was dismissed, but waiting with the politeness of a tired guest until Hunter murmured something that Edith did not hear; and she stepped down, took hold of Cecil Warner's hand, and walked with him drowsily to the defense table, and sat leaning her head back against his arm, eyes closed, until the Judge announced adjournment for the day. No part of the courtroom ritual now remained--except one. The long finger of the electric wall clock jerked, and was still a while.